The Currant Bush

I don't know how many of you have read "The Currant Bush" by Hugh B. Brown, but I read it recently and it really touched my heart. It's similar to the quote on the right hand column of this blog, but it just really touched me recently when I read it. You can find the whole thing on the church's website and you can look up "The Currant Bush" by Hugh B. Brown in the Jan. 1973 New Era on page 14. Anyways, in the article, he talks about how he was pruning the currant bush and he thought he saw tears coming from it and said, "What are you crying about?" You know, I thought I heard that currant bush talk. And I thought I heard it say this: "How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree and the fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me, because I didn't make what I should have made. How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here." That's what I thought I heard the currant bush say, and I thought it so much that I answered. I said, "Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn't intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and some day, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, 'Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down, for caring enough about me to hurt me. Thank you, Mr. Gardener.'" I just feel like as things have been going in my life recently, "The Gardener" has been telling me that I'm not supposed to be a shade tree or something else, but that He knows what He's making me into and that I just need to have patience and not resist what He's making me into. I know like it says above that someday when I am laden with fruit, I will say, "Thank you Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down (humble me), for caring enough about me to hurt me. Thank you Mr. Gardener."